It is that time of the year when many new students are starting university. Here at Covance Leeds, we are located close to the city centre and we would like to say a big welcome to all students who have arrived in this lovely city for the new academic year!

We understand that arriving at university can be a daunting experience, so we have put together a few top tips which we hope will be useful while you are settling in.

• Researching which student bank accounts are available before choosing one is a wise idea, as there are some great offers to be found.
• Use framed photos, trinkets and some of your favourite books to give your room in halls that ‘home away from home’ feeling.
• Be sociable and try to get to know people from the start – making friends will help you to settle in.
• Find out which clubs and societies you can join and what events are on during term time, as these are all super ways of getting to know people.
• Explore the local area – take a walk and familiarise yourself with your surroundings. A new place will start to feel more welcoming when you know your way around and in practical terms, it is useful to know where the local shops and amenities are located.
• Work out a budget and stick to it – if you plan what you can afford to spend weekly, it will make life much simpler in the long term.
• Plan your meals – work out what you need to get weekly as doing one big food shop is more cost effective than buying items here and there.

Here at Covance Leeds we would love to wish every student a wonderful term ahead. We are based in a Grade II listed building surrounded by attractive grounds and gardens, just a short walk from Leeds city centre and adjacent to the universities.

Here are a couple of useful websites which may come in handy too:

• BBC Good Food has a site just for student recipes: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/collection/student
• National Union of Students website has great tips and advice: https://www.nus.org.uk/en/advice/
• This section on Which website deals with student finance: https://university.which.co.uk/advice/student-finance
• STA does excellent student travel deals:  http://www.statravel.co.uk/

Here at Covance we are getting excited for the start of the FIFA World Cup. Did you know that as a clinical trial volunteer at our Covance Leeds Clinic, you have access to a host of facilities including satellite television with Sky Sports and free Wi-Fi (and you can bring your own Laptops / iPads too) so you can chill out and watch the football while you take part in our paid clinical trials! To celebrate the FIFA World Cup 2018, we have rounded up a few interesting facts:

• The FIFA World Cup 2018 tournament will take place in Russia from June 14 to July 15 – the first time Russia has hosted the event.
• The first World Cup was played in 1930 in Uruguay, who also won it that year!
• The most goals ever scored by one player in a World Cup match, was five by Oleg Salenko of Russia.
• The birth rate of the nation that wins the World Cup goes up 9 months after victory!

With the anticipation for the World Cup building, why not join us now so you don’t miss any of those all-important World Cup games. You can apply to join our Covance volunteer panel here, to be selected as a participant for our paid clinical trials. Take a look at our current studies here.

If you are already a Covance clinical trial volunteer, why not get your mates involved so you can watch the World Cup together – you will receive payment of at least £50 for each recommendation (£200 for specific groups). Click here for full details.

Don’t forget, as a Covance clinical trials participant, you can keep up with those all-important World Cup matches in the comfort of our lounge areas – we are looking forward to kick-off! If you are not in to football, there are many other ways to relax here at our Covance Leeds Clinic. As a Covance clinical trials participant, you have access to the following within our Leeds Clinic:

• Satellite television with Sky Sports and Sky Movies in HD
• Free Wi-Fi
• Pool table
• Free retro arcade games
• Xbox 360 & PS3
• Board games
• Book library
• Daily newspapers
• Organised events such as quizzes and bingo
• Modern shower rooms
• 3 delicious meals a day

Clinical trials in healthy volunteers are an essential part of developing treatments for every kind of  illness. While many of our studies at Covance aim to tackle prevalent conditions like diabetes, heart disease and depression, we also work on treatments for diseases you may never have heard of – like hereditary angioedema (HAE).

HAE is a genetic condition affecting about 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 50,000 people worldwide. It can be diagnosed through a simple blood test, but the condition is so rare that the test isn’t routinely offered to people who display symptoms. It can take up to 9 years to diagnose!

The main symptom of HAE is rapid and extreme attacks of swelling, which comes on very quickly and can take days to subside. Attacks can affect almost any part of the body. Swelling in the face, limbs and extremities can be disfiguring and extremely uncomfortable, and patients can find it impossible to go about their daily life during this kind of an attack. Some patients also have episodes of internal abdominal swelling. This can be incredibly painful, and because the swelling occurs on the inside of the body, it is even harder to identify HAE as the cause of the problem. If a patient’s first major incidence of HAE swelling is abdominal, it is very unlikely that this illness will be diagnosed and treated correctly.

Perhaps worst of all, HAE can cause swelling of the respiratory system, which can quickly and unexpectedly close the airways and be fatal. Undiagnosed patients are in particular danger.  To an emergency responder, this kind of a flare looks a lot like an allergic reaction, and it is likely that they would administer an Epipen to reduce the swelling. Unfortunately, anti-allergy medication has no effect on the symptoms of HAE. Tragically, 20-30% of patients die before the age of 20.

As the name suggests, HAE is a genetic disorder passed down through families. Attacks can be triggered by several different factors, including stress, injuries, viruses and hormonal changes – women are more susceptible to swelling during periods and pregnancy. Of course, these factors are very difficult to avoid during day-to-day life.

Many prescription medications are known to trigger attacks, so that HAE patients cannot rely on medicines when they are experiencing other illnesses.

So what is being done to stop this awful disease?

Fortunately, there are licensed treatments on the market which can help to prevent flares and alleviate swelling once a patient has been diagnosed with HAE. However, these have unpleasant side effects for some patients, including ‘virilization’, or the development of some masculine traits in female users.

Recently, an alternative drug was developed which showed some promise of treating HAE without causing unwanted side effects. However, to be effective this drug had to be taken 3x daily on an empty stomach. This regime was deemed to be impractical for a medication which should be taken daily for life.

Covance is studying a potential new treatment for HAE which appears to be both effective and gentle, and we need your help to get this drug on the market for the people who need it most. Healthy men and women aged 18-55 who have been non-smokers for at least the last 12 months can take part and will receive from £100 per day for taking the time to be a part of this research. Apply now to help change lives.

Here at our Leeds clinic, there’s another huge study coming our way. Over the next few months, we’ll be enrolling 240 healthy men and women aged 18-55 including smokers of up to 10 cigarettes per day to help us test a potential new treatment for Rheumatoid Arthritis. I’ve written about this chronic and debilitating illness before in this blog post, and it left me in no doubt that a solution for RA must be found. But what’s so special about this particular study drug?

Well, to be honest… at first I found that question quite difficult to answer!

The drug is what’s known as a biosimilar. This means it is meant to closely resemble another drug, one which is already licensed and available. So, a copy then?  It’s not quite that simple.

To understand a biosimilar, we must first look at a class of drugs called biologics. Unlike a typical drug which is created by mixing chemicals, a biologic is a drug containing ingredients which were manufactured inside a living cell. Often, synthetic DNA created in a lab is used to produce biologic ingredients.

In recent years biologic drugs have revolutionised the way we treat a huge range of illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis, and rheumatoid arthritis. However, creating an effective biologic is no easy task. Creating a biologic drug is sometimes compared to making wine – temperature, variety of grape, location, soil quality, rainfall, all make a huge difference to the finished product. Like our grapes, biologic ingredients are unpredictable, and their effectiveness depends on a massive range of factors.

The result? Biologic drugs take many years to develop, and the cost is nothing short of astronomical. The reality is that this expense is passed on to patients and to healthcare trusts. Biologic treatment costs in the region of £2500-3000 per month, and when many of the patients who rely on it have incurable chronic conditions, this cost mounts up very quickly! The sad fact is it’s too expensive to prescribe biologics to everyone who could benefit from them. They are usually offered when an illness has progressed and nothing else works.

Enter Biosimilars!

So – the patent expires on a biologic, another company copies the idea and sells it much cheaper? Right? Um, no.

When the patent runs out on a typical drug, rival companies can easily access the chemical ‘recipe’ and recreate the drug without incurring the costs of research and development (this is why you can buy paracetamol from the supermarket so cheaply!). But remember we said that biologics are a bit like wine? Developing a biosimilar is a bit like trying to recreate a bottle of wine as closely as possible – same grapes, same weather, same location- and working all of this out just by tasting the wine. Like creating the original drug, it requires a shedload of skill, patience, and money.

Developing a biosimilar is no ‘easy way out’ for a pharmaceutical company. The time, energy and cost of creating a biosimilar is tremendous – but any saving which can be made by creating biosimilars is an advantage, and will lead to the drug becoming more accessible to the patients who need it.

If you’d like to help us develop a biosimilar which could benefit thousands of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients and earn from £100 per day, apply now to become a clinical trials volunteer.

The details of a brand new study land on my desk, and I prepare myself to start researching a new (to me) and particularly nasty-sounding condition called Trigeminal Neuralgia. But there’s something even more unusual about this study: it’s a type of clinical trial called an ethnic matching study.

For this trial, our volunteers will be split into 3 groups of Caucasian volunteers and 3 groups of Japanese volunteers. The idea is that for every Japanese volunteer who enrols, we have a Caucasian volunteer to match them; so if a Japanese woman weighing 51kg checks in, we must also check-in a Caucasian woman weighing around 51kg on the next group, so that we can compare their details as closely as possible.

Now, I might’ve mentioned this already – but I’m NOT a scientist! My gut tells me there must be a very good reason for us to introduce such a complicated study design. So I decide to find out!

I start by learning a little more about Trigeminal Neuralgia (TN), and almost straight away I wish I hadn’t.

TN is a form of chronic pain affecting the trigeminal nerve – the nerve which controls sensitivity in the face. It starts above and behind the ear and has branches stretching across the jaw, cheekbone and eye socket. If the protective sheathing around this nerve is damaged, patients can experience pain so intense that TN has been ‘fondly’ nicknamed ‘The Suicide Disease’. That’s right. People have committed suicide rather than experience more of the pain. It’s that bad.

Shuddering, I try and find out what a patient’s alternatives to suicide are. I’m pretty sure this is not a job for paracetamol or ibuprofen.

I’m not really comforted to learn that one option is using radiation or surgery to permanently damage the trigeminal nerve. This method effectively removes the source of the pain, but can also result in facial numbness.

The other option is to take anti-convulsant drugs which block pain signals from the nerve. These are the most effective and least invasive option for TN patients. They are, quite literally, a lifeline. But they aren’t perfect.

In very rare cases, some anti-convulsants can trigger a serious skin condition called Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, which can be lethal if not diagnosed and treated quickly. To reiterate, this is a very rare side effect, affecting as few as 1 in 10,000 patients. However, it is most often found in patients of Asian descent.

Suddenly, I’m starting to appreciate why we do ethnic matching studies.

This isn’t the only example of patients from different ethnic groups reacting differently to medications. For instance, warfarin, which is commonly used to treat high blood pressure, is prescribed in different doses to Black, White and Asian patients, because each group metabolizes the drug at different rates.

In this study, we are testing a new anti-convulsant. Well, newish, to be more precise. The drug has already passed safety testing in healthy volunteers, and it has been found to be effective in treating patients with trigeminal neuralgia. And while this is all extremely positive, we need to closely scrutinize the effect of the drug on our Japanese volunteers to ensure that Asian patients are not being exposed to a higher risk of serious side effects. Clever, eh?

This clinical trial is a vital stage in bringing a new treatment, and new hope, to patients who need it. If you’d like to be a part of it, and you can commit to spending 5 nights in our Leeds clinic, apply to become a Covance paid volunteer.

Recently, we have started recruiting type 2 diabetics for one of our longest (and most highly paying) studies on record. The clinical trial got off to a start earlier this month when 2 lovely chaps checked in for their first residential stay. I caught up with them to find out what they thought of the experience so far, and what made them decide to become volunteers in clinical research.

Douglas and Peter are looking very relaxed when I track them down on their second day on study, with one of our largest bedrooms to themselves.
Douglas tells me ‘I recently retired and I’ve got used to spending a lot of time relaxing since then. The only problem is I’m now climbing up the walls! I’ve run out of walls to climb up at home, so I started looking for something useful to do with my time. When I saw this advertised, I thought it seemed a much more worthwhile thing to do than washing cars or anything like that!’
Both men are in agreement that this sense of doing something which could improve healthcare for others was what motivated them to call us – much more so than the monetary reward. The two of them joke that they’re hoping to win a Nobel prize for their contribution to science.
I asked them about their experience of being diagnosed and living with type 2 diabetes, and it’s a subject which they seem to make light of: ‘I found out I was diabetic after I went to the Doctor with a rash on my leg’, says Peter ‘I’ve always been prone to mosquito bites, so I thought that I must have fleas. Imagine my surprise when the Dr told me I’d been eating too much chocolate! Fortunately, I have been able to manage the condition by making changes to the way I eat, and since then I haven’t had many other serious symptoms’
Douglas adds ‘I found out about my diabetes in a routine check-up, and like Peter I haven’t had any symptoms which have worried me too much. To be honest, it was more of a nuisance than anything else to begin with. I felt fine, but I was always having to attend this appointment here and that appointment there. After a while, I started to ignore the letters from my Doctor and all the reminders I was getting. I just sort of acted like it wasn’t happening.

‘When my granddaughter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, it completely changed my attitude. Although Type 1 and Type 2 are different, my concern for her made me more aware of what could go wrong if this was left untreated and gave me more respect for the condition. I’ve put a lot more effort into controlling my diabetes since then.’
This study has a number of non-invasive but unusual procedures, and the gentlemen tell me what they’ve been up to since checking in. We compare notes about the Human Appetite Lab (which I’ve experienced myself as part of our clinicians’ staff training), and I think it’s clear that they’d rather sit and talk to each other at mealtimes than sit in separate small white rooms.
‘The best bit so far has been the BodPod’, Peter tells me. ‘It was a bit like sitting inside a giant eggshell.’ The BodPod is a body scanner which is used to accurately measure body constitution. ‘I thought it was going to be an ordeal and that I’d be in this little chamber for half an hour or so, but it only took a few minutes. But if a few minutes had been too much for me, it’s good to know that there was a panic button in there’ the two of them laugh.

 
‘Next visit, we’re going on the treadmill, which will be a first for me’ says Douglas ‘They always remind me of Peter Kay in the video for Amarillo’. All volunteers on this study will be asked to use a treadmill for 10 minutes at 5km/h (a brisk walking pace). Peter adds ‘I’ve run on a treadmill, but this will be the first time I’ve walked on one.’
It’s good to hear that, from the start, this trial has been a positive experience for them both ‘I feel like I know more about my diabetes now than I did when I came in.’ Peter tells me ‘My blood sugar is being tested regularly, and I feel like I’ve got a better understanding of what the highs and the lows mean’.
Is it measuring up to their expectations?
‘I don’t think we had any idea what to expect, we’re just going along with things!’ says Peter
‘Everyone has been really friendly and professional, so I feel confident and safe in their hands. They’re great at telling us what we need to do, and we like that’
Douglas adds ‘Mostly it’s women telling us what to do, and I’m very used to that!’
These 2 will be visiting the clinic a total of 19 times between now and early 2017, so it’s good to see that they’re already bouncing off each other like a real double act.
‘We are going to be seeing a lot of each other, so of course it’s good to know you’ve met someone you can have a smile and a laugh with’ says Peter.
I asked would they be happy to share the Nobel prize with each other?
‘Definitely!’

If you have any questions, or you would like to take part in this study, call us on 0113 394 5200 or apply here .